Rio Film Cartoon

[Kim Veller]

Anastasiais a 1997 American animated musical historical fantasy film produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman from a screenplay by Susan Gauthier, Bruce Graham, and the writing team of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White, and based on a story adaptation by Eric Tuchman. It features songs written by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens and a musical score composed and conducted by David Newman. The film stars the voices of Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Christopher Lloyd, Hank Azaria, Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst, and Angela Lansbury. Set in an alternate 1926, the film follows an eighteen-year-old amnesiac Anastasia Romanov, who sides with two con men who wish to pass her off as the Grand Duchess to Anastasia's paternal grandmother, Dowager Empress Maria Romanov, amidst rumors that the Grand Duchess had escaped the murder of the Romanov family. The film shares its plot with the 1956 film Anastasia, which in turn was based on a play by Marcelle Maurette. Unlike those treatments, this version adds Grigori Rasputin as the main antagonist.

Anastasia was the first 20th Century Fox animated feature to be produced by its own animation division, 20th Century Fox Animation, through the animation studio Fox Animation Studios. The film premiered at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City on November 14, 1997, and was released in the United States on November 21. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the animation, voice performances, and soundtrack, though it attracted criticism from some historians for its fantastical retelling of the Grand Duchess. Anastasia grossed $140 million worldwide, making it the most profitable film from Bluth and Fox Animation Studios. It received nominations for several awards, including for Best Original Song ("Journey to the Past") and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score at the 70th Academy Awards.

While watching the meeting, Rasputin's albino bat, Bartok, notices the reliquary revived by Anya's presence. It drags him down to limbo, where he finds an undead Rasputin. Enraged to hear that Anastasia had escaped his curse, Rasputin sends demonic entities from the reliquary to kill Anya. They try to sabotage the trio's train as they leave Leningrad by overheating Beulah the train engine, and later try to lure Anya into sleepwalking off their ship headed for France. The trio unwittingly foil the attempts, forcing Rasputin to try to kill Anya himself.

Marie offers Dimitri the reward money the next day, recognizing him as the servant boy who helped them, but Dimitri declines it and leaves to return to the Soviet Union. At the celebration for her return, Anya is informed by her grandmother of Dimitri's gesture, leaving her torn between staying with Marie or going with him. Anya walks off to the Pont Alexandre III, looking for Pooka, where Rasputin entraps her, while Bartok abandons Rasputin. Dimitri returns to save Anya, but is attacked by a Pegasus statue enchanted by Rasputin. Anya smashes the reliquary, and the demons turn on and destroy Rasputin.

In May 1994, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman had signed a long-term deal to produce animated features with 20th Century Fox, with the studio channeling more than $100 million in constructing a new animation studio.[11] They selected Phoenix, Arizona, for the location of Fox Animation Studios because the state offered the company about $1 million in job training funds and low-interest loans for the state-of-the-art digital animation equipment.[12] It was staffed with 300 artists and technicians, a third of whom worked with Bluth and Goldman in Dublin, Ireland, for Sullivan Bluth Studios.[13] For their first project, the studio insisted they select one out of a dozen existing properties which they owned where Bluth and Goldman suggested adapting The King and I and My Fair Lady,[14] though Bluth and Goldman felt it would be impossible to improve on Audrey Hepburn's performance and Lerner and Loewe's score. Following several story suggestions, the idea to adapt Anastasia (1956) originated from Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Bill Mechanic. They would later adapt story elements from Pygmalion with the peasant Anya being molded into a regal woman.[15]

Early into production, Bluth and Goldman began researching the actual events through enlisting former CIA agents stationed in Moscow and St. Petersburg.[16] Around this same time, screenwriter Eric Tuchman had written a script. Eventually, Bluth and Goldman decided the history of Anastasia and the Romanov dynasty was too dark for their film.[15] In 1995, Bruce Graham and Susan Gauthier reworked Tuchman's script into a light-hearted romantic comedy. When Graham and Gauthier moved onto other projects, the husband-and-wife screenwriting team Bob Tzudiker and Noni White were hired for additional rewrites.[17] Actress Carrie Fisher also made uncredited rewrites of the film, particularly the scene in which Anya leaves the orphanage for Paris.[18]

Bluth stated that Meg Ryan was his first and only choice for the title character, but Ryan was indecisive about accepting the role due to its dark historical events.[21] To persuade her, the animation team took an audio clip of Annie Reed from Sleepless in Seattle and created an animation reel based on it which was screened for her following an invitation to the studio. Ryan later accepted the role; in her words "I was blown away that they did that".[22] Before Ryan was cast, Broadway singer and actress Liz Callaway was brought in to record several demos of the songs hoping to land a job in background vocals, but the demos were liked well enough by songwriters that they were ultimately used in the final film.[23] John Cusack openly admitted after being cast that he couldn't sing;[24] his singing duties were performed by Jonathan Dokuchitz.[25] Goldman had commented that originally, as with the rest of the cast, they were going to have Ryan record her lines separately from the others, with Bluth reading the lines of the other characters to her. However, after Ryan and the directors were finding the method to be too challenging when her character was paired with Dimitri, she and Cusack recorded the dialogue of their characters together, with Goldman noting that "it made a huge difference".[16]

Peter O'Toole was considered for the role of Rasputin, but Christopher Lloyd was hired because of his popularity from the Back to the Future trilogy. Bartok was initially written for Woody Allen, but the studio was reluctant to hire him following revelations of his relationship with his ex-partner Mia Farrow's adoptive daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. Martin Short was also considered, but Hank Azaria won the role ten minutes into his audition.[16][17]

The film score was composed, co-orchestrated, and conducted by David Newman, whose father, Alfred Newman, composed the score of the 1956 film of the same name.[26] The songs, of which "Journey to the Past" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, were written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.[27] The first song they wrote for the project was "Once Upon a December"; it was written during a heatwave "so [they were] sweating and writing winter imagery".[20] The film's soundtrack was released in CD and audio cassette format on October 28, 1997.[28]

20th Century Fox scheduled for Anastasia to be released on November 21, 1997, notably a week after the re-release of Disney's The Little Mermaid. Disney claimed it had long-planned for the re-release to coincide with a consumer products campaign leading into Christmas and the film's home video release in March 1998, as well continue the tradition of re-releasing their animated films within a seven-to-eight year interval.[29] In addition to this, Disney would release several competing family films including Flubber on the following weekend, as well as a double feature of George of the Jungle and Hercules.[29] To avoid branding confusion, Disney banned television advertisements for Anastasia from being aired on the ABC program The Wonderful World of Disney.[30]

Commenting on the studios' fierce competition, Disney spokesman John Dreyer brushed off allegations of studio rivalry, claiming: "We always re-release our movies around holiday periods". However, Fox executives refused to believe Dreyer's statement with Bill Mechanic responding that "it's a deliberate attempt to be a bully, to kick sand in our face. They can't be trying to maximize their own business; the amount they're spending on advertising is ridiculous... It's a concentrated effort to keep our film from fulfilling its potential".[31]

Despite this, the film is constantly confused to have been made by Disney due to its then contemporary films. This is not helped by the fact that 20th Century Fox, the film's primary distributor, was eventually purchased by the Walt Disney Company in 2019, thus adding the film to the studio's library and increasing confusion even more.[32][33][34]

Anastasia was accompanied by a marketing campaign of more than $50 million with promotional sponsors from Burger King, Dole Food Company, Hershey, Chesebrough-Ponds, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Shell Oil, and the 1997 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Overall, the marketing costs exceeded that of Independence Day by more than 35 percent.[35] For merchandising, Fox selected Galoob to license dolls based on Anastasia.[31] Many storybooks adapted from the film were released by Little Golden Books. In August 1997, the SeaWorld theme parks in San Diego and Orlando featured a 40-foot-long, 20-foot-high inflatable playground for children called "Anastasia's Kingdom".[36]

On April 28, 1998, and March 16, 1999, Anastasia was released on VHS, LaserDisc and DVD and sold eight million units.[38] The film was first rereleased on February 19, 2002 as part of the Fox Family Features lineup alongside Thumbelina and FernGully: The Last Rainforest. The film was again rereleased on a two-disc "Family Fun Edition" DVD with the film in its original theatrical 2.35:1 widescreen format on March 28, 2006. The first disc featured an optional audio commentary from directors/writers Bluth and Goldman, and additional bonus material. The second included a making-of documentary, music video and making-of featurette of Aaliyah's "Journey to the Past", and additional bonus content.[39] The film was released on Blu-ray on March 22, 2011; this included Bartok the Magnificent in the special features.[40]

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